Don Hutchinson's Meeting with TPRO Rep in CA PART 1
The following data resulted from a question and answer meeting held at
the Sacramento TavaTechnologies office on Tuesday, Nov. 25th. I have
withheld mention of specific Tava client names which you will find
frustrating and for that, I apologize in advance. As a result of the
experience, I now have first-hand information that I could not have
gotten any other way. Some of this information you already know.
Some, you may not know. Hopefully, it's not all a big yawn for you.
Please do exactly what we did and go visit the local Tava office in
your town if you have time. More of us doing this will help our
combined understanding.
1) Tava Technologies office on 11/25/1997 with the Sacramento
area manager and the regional manager. Four of us visited
Tava:
1 Private Investor with experience on the factory floor in
the aerospace industry
1 Private Investor (me)
2 Stock Brokers
I own Tava shares along with one other attendee.
2) What does the Sacramento Tava office do (used to be Vision
Engineering)?
Quote from Manager: "Simply put, we make stuff. If Nabisco
figures out a new cookie, Tava builds the factory system to
make the new cookie." Topro builds factories using Motocoms
(sp.), Seimans, and Alan Bradley as suppliers. There are
probably other suppliers. Tava is on the advisory board to
Alan Bradley.
3) Tava Companies
Tava companies are in different geographical locations. Tava
uses resource leveling to share staff across geographical
areas as needed. Vision Engineering is 13 years old. Now is
called Tava Technologies. Sign outside building says Tava.
Small building in an industrial business park. Purposely
modest because their clientele are factory people who shy away
from fancy office decor.
Tava Companies
Topro in Denver: Municipal Water, Waste Water business
Tech Sales Inc (didn't discuss them)
Vision Engineering
Sac office VE office:
Pharmaceutical and Food Manufacturing
Territory = Cal thru Nevada
Has the yyyy business
14 staff, 15 in Dec, 30 next year.
Expanding office from 6700 to 7200 sq feet.
South Cal VE office:
Pharmaceutical and Food Manufacturing
(Has the IVAX contract)
Other VE offices:
Phoenix (all training done here for Tava), Puerto
Rico (lots of manufacturing), Boston
Advanced Control Systems:
Pharmaceutical and Food Manufacturing (east coast)
Management Design & Consulting:
Atlanta
4) Westchester Tava Office
Does all the PlantY2KOne Compliance reports Not sure if this
was a VE office.
5) Some Tava contract sites:
Ohio, Hershey PA, Singapore, Florida, Cypress and Sac, CA,
Prague, Germany, Switzerland
6) Local business (some Y2K): 11 corporations were mentioned.
You would recognize almost all of their names.
7) Tava's Y2K work -- typical plant lifecycle:
The inventory, assessment, and planning phases are billed at
$160/hr.
Inventory -- 2 staff on-site one day
Assessment -- 2 staff on-site one week
Planning -- lots of conference calls, maybe couple of
weeks.
Remediation -- total wild card on time as to resources
required. 30% hardware cost, 70% people
cost. Depends on what client wants to do.
$150/hr to do research on component if it comes up as a
non-hit on their database in Westchester. Employees in the
Westchester office do the research.
8) Competition
Alan Bradley
Tava is also an authorized Alan Bradley integrator
Raytheon
We were told that once Raytheon saw Tava's PlantY2KOne
offering, they decided to back off doing Y2K business,
i.e. they were impressed with it and the database. So,
on Wednesday, we called Raytheon and they said "We DO
have a Y2K offering."
We are following up with Raytheon.
Bechtel
We were told that Bechtel also saw Tava's PlantY2Kone
offering and decided to not do Y2K work either. We have
not followed up with Bechtel.
Locally
Sabre Engineering in Auburn, CA
Matrix in Napa, CA
PSI in Walnut Creek, CA (The engineer in our group says
that PSI is a big business.) |
